Comcast and United.com-Call to report
 

I just got off the phone with Comcast, and they seem to be unaware of any problems with United.com and Comcast. They are now, because several pings and tracerts did not function correctly. The tech suggested that the more people that call (1-800-266-2278 or 1-866-594-1234) and report their problems, the faster it will be resolved. Don't use live chat, because that rep told me that they cannot escalate this type of problem, and to call the above numbers to report it.

I will also notify United.com to help us, because from past experience with web site DNS problems, Comcast did not look for a solution unless the web site complained to them. Maybe several complaints to United.com by us can help.

If you are having the same "cannot find united.com" or "cannot find ua2go.com" or "cannot find ual.com" (all Firefox) or the blank page in IE, please report your problems to Comcast and United. :confused: Thanks!

(edited to add) I can't even get to the web site right now to report it to United! :mad:

You can call united.com technical support at 1-800-589-5582.

You can hunch down, start waddling, flap your arms, and quack like a duck.

You might also try sacrificing small furry animals to your clothes dryer by the light of a waxing gibbous moon.

Each of these is just as likely to make united.com work for you as calling united.com technical support. And if you do the small furry animal sacrifice, you just might find all missing socks from your entire life in your next load of laundry.

You can also try running the "ipconfig /flushdns" command from a DOS window if you're on a Windows machine. If DNS has started working for you and your Windows box isn't smart enough to realize it, running this command will clear your box of any cached names that it has already looked up. And I'm pretty sure it caches failures also.

Tried it. No luck!


That was a suggestion on the Comcast boards where other people had this problem (that Comcast said they did not know about :confused: )

That did not work either, and I actually had more fun doing the above. :D

I reported it to the above number. They say they are aware of it
and "suspect" the problem is with the web site, even though I pointed out
that I have had no problem with my server at work. Enough calls might get them out of the denial stage.

I get these error messages all the time when using comcast, when at work, when using TMobile hotspots and when using hotel high speed internet access. Usually reloading the website a few times gets through. Sometimes you have to wait a few hours. This makes me think it is a united.com problem. Its always been flaky.

I also have had problems resolving the united.com domain lately. I use Mediacom.

Oh........ok!?!?!?
 

Good call, Sneezy. Here's the reply I got. I asked them to contact Comcast too, since from a similar problem last year with a financial site, it was not corrected until the affected web site complained. I'm just befuddled and astonished that UA doesn't care enough to contact Comcast! They actually want Comcast to contact them? :confused:

(My snotty comments in red)

"Thank you for your email, Mr. ChgoBob

We are not currently experiencing any technical problems on the
united.com site. <HAH!!>

Please contact Comcast and let them know that their DNS(Domain Name
Server) is not reading the united.com words or the IP address of
209.87.112.90. Their technical department should understand this. If
they have any questions, please have them contact United. <Duh--OK? I'm sure Comcast is worried about customers not able to use UA>

Thank you for choosing united.com. <I can't choose united.com.....can't you read?>

Sincerely,
< >
United.com Web Customer Support"

But that actually makes sense. Comcast is at fault, not united.com. Seems like most other ISP users report no problems.

I agree 100%, and my suspicion is the same that it is Comcast's problem.

BUT..... :D , if you or I ran a web site that maybe dozens to hundreds (perhaps thousands) of customers could not regularly access and could not readily spend their money with us, I have to think both of us would be on the phone to Comcast to rectifiy the problem, and not leave it up to frustrated customers.

All I'm saying is that UA should show a little interest in this problem. Am I crazy?

Nope, not crazy. I hope UA has a call into Comcast.

I spoke UAL Technical Services a few minutes ago. They are waiting for Comcast to fix the problem. They suggest trying the IP address to get to the main site, http://209.87.112.90, but you may find that you can't fully move about in the site once you get there - I couldn't get to my itineraries, for example.

When I have had a similar experience with Comcast and DNS problems in the past, the fix came in days rather than hours...

You can try to force your machine to use a different name server.

On a WinXX box, you'll need administrator privileges, though. (And I hope you don't normally surf the web with a login that has those powers....) And this is mostly from memory because I don't usually log in with an admin account...

When you're connected to the web and everything is working as well as it gets, start up a DOS command-line window. Enter the "ipconfig /all" command. Leave this window up - you'll need this data to reconfigure your TCP/IP settings.

Go to Start->Settings->Network and Dialup Connections, then right click on the correct icon and select "Properties". Once there, select "TCP/IP" or similar. When there, deselect "Get IP address automatically" and fill in the information for IP address, net mask, etc. that you should still see on the DOS window from above. Also fill in your DNS server(s). To bypass Comcast's DNS services, you can use other DNS servers. Cox DNS servers are 68.100.16.25 and 68.100.16.30. You can try them, but I don't know if Cox lets users outside of their network use their DNS servers.

And always write down or remember your original settings, lest you wind up having to learn more about the internet and TCP/IP than you wanted to. Because you'll probably want to return to them in the future.

And once it starts working, call Comcast and tell them to fire the idiots who can't even run a DNS service.

Try the ever-present and useful public dns server @ 4.2.2.1

I just got off the phone with Comcast tech support. It took some time, but he finally said that, yes, they are aware of the problem. He had me run a "tracert" and diligently copied the response times into a trouble ticket to help escalate priority of the problem (only about 10 tries out of 30 were able to connect).

I was fairly impressed with the tech's interest in the problem, but at $99/mo for Comcast HSI anything less would have been offensive, ya know?